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Summary: Modern day Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Comment: Fight club is contemporary social criticism blended with dark humor and poignant insight. The nameless faceless narrator is unsatisfied in his seemingly perfect white collar job that would gain "alumni notes" approval. Unfortunately, he harbors resentment against the repressed desires in a stifling society and he seek sanctuary in support groups for the mortally infirmed. He develops a relationship with Tyler Durden. As a respectable member of society, the narrator cannot fulfill his repressed evil desires. Thus, he joins forces with Tyler to develop a way to separate and free his evil urges. Together, they invent the "fight club" that evolves into more anti-social gangs that further promote chaos and violence.
Without giving away the surprise ending or too many plot lines, Fight Club is an examination of the duality of human nature. Similar to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, characters are portrayed as tamed and civilized by the laws of society but having an inner propensity for evil and mayhem. Violence is not merely a sin to be avoided, but a path to enlightenment. Life and death are intricately interwoven as living to avoid death is death. The organizations created by Tyler are reminiscent of the totalitarian regime of Big Brother in 1984. No one shares information (the first two rules of fight club are not to talk about fight club) and Tyler is ominous but never present. Mayhem assignments are assigned anonymously and carried out without question and without collaboration with other members. Tyler's directives reduces his being to its most basic form, in which evil runs freely without considering the constraints of society and civilization.
The book reads fast as lightening. Highly recommend, but not for the faint of heart. Story is heavily spiced with acts of violence and mayhem committed against innocent and not-so-innocent victims. Modern classic more comparable to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Frankenstein than Vonnegut.
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Summary: .
Comment: The First rule of FIGHT CLUB IS You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.
The Second rule of FIGHT CLUB IS You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.
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Summary: Big one
Comment: What can I say more the typical "this is your life and it is ending one minute at a time"? I love this kind of narrative style, but what makes the book so special (apart from the mentioned style) is the philosophical message it carries. I was too young when I saw the movie, but when you get a mainstream job, you clearly feel in in your flesh: you are not special. So accept it and let things happen. Obviously, there is no need to follow Tyler's path and set up a fight club. People just need to focus and follow their own nature. Discard whatever that makes you pain, retain whatever that makes you happy, and that's the whole message.
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Summary: A sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness.
Comment: Here's a word to describe the pervasive resonance this story has enjoyed.
Confrontational.
Fight Club is a pugnacious challenge to examine your life, in the form of a blunt instrument. If you want to get peoples attention these days, best be prepared to bludgeon them upside the head. We the ADD generations have no time for study and meditation. You have 5 seconds to deliver the message in an original and exciting way. Check and check.
Take a massively concentrated answer to the existential dilemma, throw in a couple themes of timely relevence, a sense of urgency, twisted humor and wrap up the whole enchilada in a transgressional tortilla and voila! A quintessential 90's literary masterpiece. Fight Club is the successor to Clockwork Orange.
"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time"
Consider yourself challenged.
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Summary: Every teenager needs to read this novel!
Comment: Fight Club: Self-Improvement, Self-Realization, and Self-Destruction
Growing up, no matter if I succeeded or failed, I received a big hug from my mom and a little-league trophy from my dad. I grew up in a school district that continued to bash the bell curve and inflate grades until we were all winners. We learned through reward and we liked it; we were raised to win and we strove for perfection.
Unfortunately, we were raised wrong. I realized this when I read Fight Club for the first time at age sixteen. I am writing this review because of this experience; I am writing this review because I believe every teenager in the country should read this book.
Keep reading and I'll tell you why.
I reviewed Fight Club by asking two distinct questions: How did the novel change me? And, why did it change me? While I am reviewing this novel for teenagers and their parents, many of my claims are built off other Amazon.com reviews not always written for the same audience. This might sound corny, but just as Fight Club`s protagonist is attempting to crack society's shell; I am attempting to crack to the novel's core.
You see, Fight Club is not just the bloody mess its title indicates, but the story of a man finding his place in a society that does not suit him. The author, Chuck Palahniuk, uses this character to critique the hypocrisy of a culture in which ordinary people are tormented by the drudgery of their modern, daily routines. Tortured by monotony, men are driven to violence in order to escape.
Palahniuk uses this violence to get his readers to question their own lives--to question how they were raised. As the narrator struggles to find a balance between himself, a "rag doll of society", and Tyler Durden, his schizophrenic alter ego, he concludes that if "self-improvement isn't the answer... Maybe self-destruction is" (Palahniuk 49). This kind of teen self-reflection is "extremely important" to development explains Dr. Bernard Golden in his book Healthy Anger. At the same time the narrator becomes involved with an underground fight club, leaving the reader to question the legitimacy their own role in society.
As the fight club quickly becomes a method of therapy for the protagonist, it also becomes an addiction for the reader. As reviewer Kevin Joseph points out, Palahniuk's characters fight for that second of self-realization, a psychological balance that day-to-day life cannot supply. Do we not do the same thing when we are teenagers? Are we not the "all-singing, all-dancing crap of this world" searching for our own place to fit in (169)? You see Palahniuk's characters go to these fight clubs not to impose pain upon others, but to have it imposed upon them. They need to find out what is really real, to temporarily get away from reality--something we all do as we grow up.
This is exactly why every teenager in our country should read Fight Club. It changes a young reader by getting him or her to explore what we as often take for granted. It gets teenagers to question ideals that their parents, their society and sometimes even their common sense enforce. It turns a sixteen year old learner into a sixteen year old thinking.
While there are critics like reviewer Justine1212, who claim that Palahniuk's themes of nihilism and his harsh criticism of consumerism damage the minds of young readers, they ignore the value of self-exploration. In fact, Palahniuk's bitterness towards materialism provides the reader with the dark humor that reviewer CapLeoGem and reviewer Czombie find to be the "bitterly sarcastic" essence of the book:
I think this excerpt from Fight Club kind of sums up my feelings about the book: "[Before,] it used to be enough that when I came home angry and knowing that my life wasn't toeing my five-year plan, I could clean my condominium or detail my car" (49). What does one do when having a nice condominium and car is not enough? Personally, I would not think to start a fight club, but it is these absurdities and incongruities that flood the book, allowing Palahniuk to reveal the dark side of American culture that reviewer Theodore Burke finds "essential."
After all, "`It's only after you've lost everything,'" Tyler says, "`that you're free to do anything.'" While I cannot say I've read Fight Club five times in two months like reviewer Dan Seitz "cinnatusc," I can say that reading Fight Club has, indeed, changed me.
Everyday for one hundred and eighty days of the past fifteen years of my life I have woken up, gone to school and come home only to do it again the next day. Before I read Fight Club, I never really questioned this schedule--my life.
Overall, Fight Club is a book definitely worth reading and has a very accurate customer-rating of four and half stars (even though I gave it five stars). So be a good parent, buy your children a copy this holiday season and break their materialistic obsession or be a good teenager, beg your parents for a copy this holiday season and question authority.
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